If you picked “D,” go to the head of the class — you are correct. As an award, you may finish the rest of my column.

My contention has always been that I can handle just about anything if I am armed with all the information. Just tell me the truth and I’ll figure out the right course of action. And quite honestly, I’m more interested in having all the facts about a thing then having my personal point of view be upheld. I will change my mind on a subject (and I have) if the facts don’t bear out my opinion. Unfortunately not many far-left liberals live by that code.

By now everyone knows the truth about AIDS. It has been well documented that both the government and the entire mainstream media lied about AIDS in the 1980s by scaring Americans into believing that heterosexuals were as much at risk for acquiring AIDS as gays and intravenous drug users. The science had to be lied about so as to not single out any one group. Political correctness and leftist ideology joined forces in order to turn the facts upside down.

Magazines and newspapers ran with the scare story that we were all equally susceptible to catching the AIDS virus. The cover of Life Magazine in 1985 read: “Now, No One Is Safe from AIDS.” In 1987, U.S. News & World Report reported that AIDS was “finding fertile growth among heterosexuals.” Television “news broadcasters” and celebrities helped spread the lie. Oprah Winfrey said that “research studies” predicted that “one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years.”

In 1988, ABC’s 20/20 claimed the Center for Disease Control had discovered a shocking upsurge of heterosexual infections on college campuses. But no one questioned the fact that 28 of the 30 infections had occurred in men. Hmmm. In 1990 CNN broadcast that same 1988 study, proclaiming: “A new report from CDC indicates that AIDS is on the rise on college campuses.”

But wait a minute! In May of 1996 the state of California Assembly Education Subcommittee released the following concerning the CDC fraud: Summary — The nature and extent of the AIDS epidemic has been misrepresented to the public by federal agencies, with the acquiescence of much of the media. The legislature should do what it can to encourage support for research that provides an independent review of the nature of the epidemic and the actual risk that AIDS presents to the public in general.

This came after a Wall Street Journal investigative report was made public earlier that month. The article ended by stating, “But nine years after the America Responds to AIDS campaign first hit the airwaves, many scientists and doctors are raising new questions. Increasingly, they worry that the everyone-gets-AIDS message — still trumpeted not only by government agencies but by celebrities and the media — is more than just dishonest: It is also having a perverse, potentially deadly effect on funding for AIDS prevention.”

And then, lo and behold, miracle of miracles, along came 2008, a quarter of a century after the outbreak of AIDS, the World Health Organization (WHO) accepted the fact that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared. Wow, just like magic! They admitted that their initial message (that everyone can get AIDS) was “misplaced.” Yeah, misplaced. “Whoops, we lied — sorry about that!”

There are still people in America who get AIDS, but the disease is what it always was, one which is acquired by promiscuous homosexual sex and sharing needles by inter-city drug users. The years of dishonesty about it have done more harm than good in terms of focusing the treatment to the real people who need the help.

Other scares from the left include secondhand smoke and global warming. Eventually these too will be proven to be lies, but when they are, look for the left to justify them by saying that they told them “for our own good.” Engaging in lies, for whatever reason, is a dangerous thing to do. I would prefer to know the truth of a thing and have the freedom to make up my own mind about how to handle it then be lied to “for my own good” by big government, mainstream liberal media and movie stars.

About

The Tolucan Times is a free weekly community newspaper, published since 1937 and available online. With over 600 drop locations throughout the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys from Encino to Pasadena, The Tolucan Times serves the communities of Glendale, Flintridge La Canada, Burbank, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Studio City, Sherman Oaks, and Van Nuys, to list a few.